AMD: TrueAudio Does Not Mean We Compete for Audio Solutions Business.

Advanced Micro Devices said that while its TrueAudio technology gives some clear benefits when it comes to positional audio for owners of select AMD Radeon R7 and R9 graphics cards, it does not mean that the company is in pursuit to compete against existing audio solution providers, such as Creative Labs. AMD claims that it enhances existing audio solutions, not introduces its own one.

AMD’s TrueAudio is fully programmable audio engine that is supposed to provide incredible level of programmability to developers, which is supposed to result in cinema-like positional audio in video games. The technology relies on both hardware and software; besides, it needs to be implemented by game developers. Therefore, although AMD has audio hardware inside its graphics processors, that hardware will not substitute existing audio solutions, either standalone or integrated.

“We are complementary to existing sound cards. If there was an existing sound card, then whatever feature set is made available by whatever sound solution is in the system we augment it. Believe it or not, there is already a lot of sound down solutions that exist today. Our stuff works with that,” said Ritche Corpus, the company’s director of software alliances and developer relations, in an interview with VR-Zone web-site.

AMD pins a lot of hopes on its TrueAudio technology for real-time positional audio processing using computational capabilities of the latest GPUs. Since the TrueAudio is fully programmable, it will now be possible for game designers to add realism to their games, provided that they are interested and the implementation does not serious affect their schedules. One of the first titles to take advantage of AMD TrueAudio will be this year's Thief by Eidos, Lichdom by Xaviant, Murdered Soul Suspect by Square Enix/AirTight and Star Citizen by Cloud Imperium Games.

AMD TrueAudio will be initially available on AMD Radeon R7 260X, R9 290 and R9 290X graphics boards based on Bonaire and Hawaii graphics processing units with special-purpose hardware blocks for the technology.